HOWELLS, William Dean

(1837-1920)

   US writer, best known for his many realist novels from 1870 onwards. His UTOPIAN sequence, A Traveler from Altruria (1892-3 Cosmopolitan; 1894) and Through the Eye of the Needle (Part One 1894Cosmopolitan; exp 1907), is a deceptively mild-mannered assault on the pretensions of late-19th-century US democracy and culture, seen from the perspective of a dreamlike visitor from Altruria, a land where the principles of Christianity and of the US Constitution, taken literally, result in an ethical form of socialism. In the second volume the visitor returns to Altruria with his US bride, and both send letters back describing that land, whose nature is somewhat influenced by the work of Edward BELLAMY, more so by that of William MORRIS. Capitalism has beenreplaced by a genuine altruistic "neighbourliness", and the two books attack hypocrisy and the more ruthless forms of capitalism in a manner both unmistakable and highly telling, even though gently put. Letters of an Altrurian Traveler (1893-4 Cosmopolitan; 1961) assembles bridging material WDH published only in magazine form; The Altrurian Romances (omni 1968) reprints everything. Much the same narrative technique reappearsmovingly in The Seen and Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon (1914), whose revived but ghostly Shakespeare, addressing the 20th-century narrator, sweetly defends his right to be considered the author of his own plays; the book is an answer to Mark TWAIN's Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909) which, after the fashion of the time, argues Francis BACON's authorship. Questionable Shapes (coll 1903) and Between the Dark and the Daylight (coll 1907),neither sf, assemble (along with other work) CLUB STORIES in which the psychologist Wanhope scientifically debunks the ghost stories of his fellow members.

   JC

   Other works: The Undiscovered Country 1880); The Leatherwood God (1916).As Editor: Shapes that Haunt the Dusk (anth 1907) with Henry Mills Alden.